For the pessimists

Last night's Bears/Cowboys game ..... 5 interceptions for Romo .... no points scored by either team in 1st quarter ..... 14 of the Bears 34 points scored by the defense ..... 16 point margin of win, 34-18.

Did the Bears win or get handed the game? For 5 turnovers, was 16 points not enough of a winning margin? Does Mike Tice suck because no points were scored in the 1st quarter?

Or do a lot of you have to continue to set the stage for your preconceived collapse of this team? Do you need to have an excuse to justify your dislike for Norv, AJ, or whoever else grinds your ax? Do you enjoy football or prefer to piss & moan about every little event that doesn't play to vision of reality? Do you understand that 1 team out of 32 hoists the Lombardi each year?

Inquiring minds would really like to hear this answered. It's a slow day & my BS quotient is feeling starved.

When the Chargers beat a team led by a top 10 QB I might give them more credit than I am willing to right now. Start with Brees, then Manning... after that you've got Flacco, Dalton, then The Rapist.

Matt Ryan was unshakable, but he's far and away the best QB with the best weapons right now.

So far the Chargers have beaten an average QB (Palmer) and two very below average QBs.

I'll stay in the Pessimist camp at least until after this weekend.

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The Chiefs have as much talent across the board as the Cowboys. I might give you Romo over Cassell, but not by a lot.

If you want to remain pessimistic, I understand. I'm leaning on realistic vs. pessimistic. BUT .... a lot of reasons that were given here for being pessimistic pointed at our last game, one that was very similar to last night's. So again - I want to hear if the Bears suck for those same reasons or if these reasons only apply to a Norv-coached Chargers team.

The Chiefs have as much talent across the board as the Cowboys. I might give you Romo over Cassell, but not by a lot.

If you want to remain pessimistic, I understand. I'm leaning on realistic vs. pessimistic. BUT .... a lot of reasons that were given here for being pessimistic pointed at our last game, one that was very similar to last night's. So again - I want to hear if the Bears suck for those same reasons or if these reasons only apply to a Norv-coached Chargers team.

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I haven't been terribly impressed by the Bears in the 2 games of theirs I've seen this season. I don't know if this was so much a "colossal win" for the Bears as it was a "staggering loss" for the Cowboys. This is the same Rollercoaster Romo that we see every year. He can be absolutely amazing at times, keeping plays alive, making good reads, and dominating opposing defenses, and at other times he comes out with his retard hat on and derps the ball to the other team, though typically not at Monday's outrageous rate. So far the Bears have blown out a bad Indy team, been beaten by a GB team facing a lot of questions at this point (though certainly a team that is expected to be in the POs), blown out an average St. Louis team, and blown out an average Dallas team. Both of our teams look very, very similar to me, except that I think that the quality of the safeties and corners on the teams are flipped. Both teams have quality at the skill positions, but are breaking in new receivers, and neither team has a spectacular line.

I think the rag on both of these teams in their losses was offensive adjustments and turnovers, with Chicago getting picked and failing to be productive in the second half of the game and San Diego fumbling and getting picked and failing to be productive in the game after the fumble. I won't speak to Chicago, because I don't know their schedule very well, and Detroit's badness and Minnesota's quality in the early going have thrown me off somewhat, but San Diego is looking very much like the 10 win +-4 Team that I thought they'd be. Against the Falcons we looked like a 6 win team, against the Raiders we looked like an 8 win team, and against the Titans and KC we looked like a 14 win team. I think that a "realist" approach is that it's too early to be overly optimistic or pessimistic, because we don't know what Denver is going to end up being. At this point I would say that a winning season seems incredibly likely, that winning the division seems very likely, and that winning (or getting to) the Superbowl looks very unlikely (and not in the sense that there are 32 teams trying to get there, but rather that Houston has looked a lot better than we have, and even if we were to get past them, the NFC appears to be the stronger conference again this year).

The great thing about the NFL is that in week 4 none of this matters. Matt Schaub, Arian Foster, and JJ Watt could all get IR'd next week. Meachem and Rivers could finally develop their chemistry. Floyd and Gates could stop dropping passes and the line could be exponentially better with Gaither at LT. I think that at the half way mark we might pull off a 7-1 record if we don't have any upsets and play well against Denver at home, with a 4 game lead on Denver if they face hardship at the hands of NE and Cincy. We were lucky enough to get a very soft first half schedule thanks to the Chiefs being absolutely abominable when everyone expected them to be amazing with all of their returning stars who were injured last season.

Buck is 100% right. When another team is imploding before your very eyes you don't need to 'bury the dagger' as Canepa wrote, but play smart, tight football, run the ball, don't turn it over, play D, and let the other team finish themselves off. A scoreline needn't reflect the turnover quotient, i.e. did we score enough considering the 6:1 turnover ratio we got? Rather it should represent the coach and the team doing what it takes to get a W on the board, especially a division road game, namely having more points on the board after 60 minutes than your opponent. Call me an idiot but I'd still be happy if the final is 10-9, I'll take 12 more of those please. I'm sure people would still complain if we'd routed them 56-10 that it was just the Chiefs, and therefore shouldn't count.

When the Chargers beat a team led by a top 10 QB I might give them more credit than I am willing to right now. Start with Brees...

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Well, the report card is mixed, at this point: Three solid wins, one horrific, scary, awful loss.
I agree, that until the Chargers "beat someone" any optimism should be kept on a short leash.
After all, this is supposed to be a mediocre team (15th of 32 in initial ESPN Power Rankings)

That said, one thing I've noticed about the chronically whiny(I call them "Marges"...the irrationally negative counterpart to the irrationally positive "Homer")
is that in order to continue the crying, they'll constantly move the goalposts. Thus, while any long time fan
knows a hungry Drew Brees in the Superdome IS something to be concerned about...
if the Chargers do rise to the challenge and beat him, the "Start with Brees" will have changed to
"So what? You beat a crappy 0-5 team...it means nothing!"

With the 'Marge' crowd, wins usually mean nothing...only the losses really mean anything.

For cheap laughs, wait for losers to self-identify with the "irrational" component...then watch'em protest too obnoxiously against the "Marge" definition. Those that know--on some level, anyway--that they are nothing more than inconsolable crybabies...get really, really pissy about this.

Well, the report card is mixed, at this point: Three solid wins, one horrific, scary, awful loss.
I agree, that until the Chargers "beat someone" any optimism should be kept on a short leash.
After all, this is supposed to be a mediocre team (15th of 32 in initial ESPN Power Rankings)

That said, one thing I've noticed about the chronically whiny(I call them "Marges"...the irrationally negative counterpart to the irrationally positive "Homer")
is that in order to continue the crying, they'll constantly move the goalposts. Thus, while any long time fan
knows a hungry Drew Brees in the Super Dome IS something to be concerned about...
if the Chargers do rise to the challenge and beat him, the "Start with Brees" will have changed to
"So what? You beat a crappy 0-5 team...it means nothing!"

With the 'Marge' crowd, wins usually mean nothing...only the losses really mean anything.

I think that's just a function of the length of the season. In baseball and basketball it's a race to win X games and if you win that many games you're going to the playoffs, and it's not a number much higher than 50%. For example, the current best record in baseball, shared by the Nats and Reds, is 96-64, which in the NFL's 16 game season would be 9.6 wins. Each loss in an NFL season has real consequences which affect playoff seeding, and then getting into the playoffs. Look at the NFC last season for a perfect example:
1 Loss = HFA
3 particular losses = 1st RD BYE
3 different losses = 1st RD Home Game
6 particular losses = WC Game against 9-7 Team.
6 different losses = WC Game against 13-3 Team
7 particular losses = 1st RD Home Game
8 losses = No Playoffs for 4 Teams

The AFC was similar, though slightly more clumped at the top
3 losses = HFA
4 particular losses = 1RB
4 different losses = WC Game against 8-8 Team
6 losses = 1st RD Home Game
7 particular losses = WC Game against a 10-6 Team
7 different losses = No Playoffs for 1 Team
8 particular losses = 1st RD Home Game
8 different losses = No Playoffs for 3 Teams

As you go through the season, each loss has a real affect on your team's postseason, whereas each individual win becomes lost to some extent because each individual win has no meaning for the postseason. The value of winning at the beginning of the season is virtually nothing compared to the value of losing, with the values becoming equal around week 12 as each individual game starts to separate playoff from non-playoff teams and teams move within the standings.

It's only natural to be more disappointed by the losses than thrilled by the wins until your team starts achieving milestones with the wins such as clinching a playoff spot, clinching a division, clinching a 1st round bye, or clinching HFA.

Buck, a bit of irony... Jason Garrett is ever bit the trash HC that Norv's detractors want to paint him as. Am I saying Norv's perfect? Hell no. But what I am saying, and I think you may agree with this, put a little too much stock in the grass on the other side of the fence being not only greener but better just because it's not the grass we've got on our side.

Look at it this way, despite the fact that AJ has some personal aversion to investing early picks into OL, at least we have an owner and GM combo that, for the most part, aren't going to go out of their way to keep their not-great HC from succeeding. For all the Spanos/AJ haters, things could be MUCH worse, we could have Al Davis Junior aka Jerruh Jones running roughshod of our team, undermining his HC (Garrett was set to deactivate the completely unproductive, regularly injured, and pretty much worthless Felix Jones this past week, but Jerry "overruled" him; and Garrett's players are actually supposed to respect and listen to orders from Mommy when they realize that Daddy Jerry is the one with all the sway?). Rob Ryan is, per numerous quotes in articles I've read, very much the hard-nosed coach who players "want to play for" that so many kept crying for this past offseason in Gruden or the other ilk... and that Cowboys defense is an inconsistent cluster****, despite having some very high end talent on it.

Some people just feel the need to complain because they're not getting their ideal situation. Guaranteed that even if/when we reach the milestone to earn a playoff spot, there will still be people on here griping because that means "Oh well now Dean has all the excuse he needs to keep AJ and Norv around another year." I generally despise Twitter, but there's a three letter expression on there that's just perfectly fitting for this: SMH.

Buck, a bit of irony... Jason Garrett is ever bit the trash HC that Norv's detractors want to paint him as. Am I saying Norv's perfect? Hell no. But what I am saying, and I think you may agree with this, put a little too much stock in the grass on the other side of the fence being not only greener but better just because it's not the grass we've got on our side.

Look at it this way, despite the fact that AJ has some personal aversion to investing early picks into OL, at least we have an owner and GM combo that, for the most part, aren't going to go out of their way to keep their not-great HC from succeeding. For all the Spanos/AJ haters, things could be MUCH worse, we could have Al Davis Junior aka Jerruh Jones running roughshod of our team, undermining his HC (Garrett was set to deactivate the completely unproductive, regularly injured, and pretty much worthless Felix Jones this past week, but Jerry "overruled" him; and Garrett's players are actually supposed to respect and listen to orders from Mommy when they realize that Daddy Jerry is the one with all the sway?). Rob Ryan is, per numerous quotes in articles I've read, very much the hard-nosed coach who players "want to play for" that so many kept crying for this past offseason in Gruden or the other ilk... and that Cowboys defense is an inconsistent cluster****, despite having some very high end talent on it.

Some people just feel the need to complain because they're not getting their ideal situation. Guaranteed that even if/when we reach the milestone to earn a playoff spot, there will still be people on here griping because that means "Oh well now Dean has all the excuse he needs to keep AJ and Norv around another year." I generally despise Twitter, but there's a three letter expression on there that's just perfectly fitting for this: SMH.

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Until the Chargers win a Super Bowl, fans will complain...... it's really that simple.

Even if they finally achieve that goal, that coach will only get a one year grace period until the fans start griping again. That's why any HC or GM worth their salt will tune the fans out.

I went to Chicago and watched the Bears Rams game week #3. Even Chicago Bears fans don't like Cutler. I heard a lot of comments such as," Are we quiet enough for you Cutler?" when the Bears had the ball. He got booed several times during the game. (I joined in ). Mind you, they won 23-6.

The Chargers will never win a game that measures up to the standards of many. After they beat the Saint's it will be reason after reason why the Saint's aren't a good barometer to measure by.

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I think that if we beat the Saints and our defense crushes their offense that will be a reason to be absolutely overjoyed. Their defense and offensive playcalling are the causes of their 0-4 start, but certainly not their offensive execution of the plays they call.

Or do a lot of you have to continue to set the stage for your preconceived collapse of this team?

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Nope.

Do you need to have an excuse to justify your dislike for Norv, AJ, or whoever else grinds your ax?

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Nope. Plenty of reasons currently exist.

Do you enjoy football or prefer to piss & moan about every little event that doesn't play to vision of reality?

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Yes, I love football and I also enjoy pissing and moaning about every little detail sometimes. Why must it be an either or situation? What's the point of doing anything if you can't talk, pissing and moaning included, about it later?

Do you understand that 1 team out of 32 hoists the Lombardi each year?

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Duh.

Also, I think:
1. The Cowboys are mediocre.
2. Romo is a scrub.
3. Bears D is very good, but the Cowboys didn't do themselves any favors by dropping passes that hit the WRs on the hands (looking @ you Dez) and Romo, like Rivers, pressing and forcing later in the game.
4. Cutler is an autistic f4g.

A W is a W. There are no style points given. However, until we beat an elite team (and an Elite QB is mos def part of that equation), were still only better than the absolute garbage teams and nothing more.

3-1 after Q1, 1st in the division, I'm happy about that. That said, still no completely sold that this team can compete with the upper crust of the league. Go into NO and dominate and we'll be one step closer to the top IMO.